mastering with Ozone

Janet,  the thing with mastering is that every case is different and you cannot necessarily use a technique or system that you used before on a song and expect it to work.  For this reason you cannot really use preset mastering settings for a given piece of music either because how do the presets know what it is your mastering?

I dont have Ozone so I am not able to help. Others here that do have might offer some advice.

Go back to the mix and make sure everything is good there. If the violin spikes in places then maybe you have to look at that at the mix level. Check the areas where this happens and you may need to alter some compressor settings etc.

If Ozone does not appear to be doing anything it may because none of the thresholds have been met and hence the processors are not doing anything as such, just passing the signal through. Try adjusting some of the thresholds (lowering them) and see what happens.

Anyway I just wanted to answer your question because you may be thinking we are all ignoring you and that is not the case! And you are very lucky you dont have a TV!! You are not missing anything. No news is good news as they say, most of the news these days is bad anyway.

Janet, I'm wondering what your "process" is. Maybe I could throw a suggestion to you while I wait for your input, see if this helps.

If you are seeing, or better said, hearing spikes in the violins, I would suggest a compressor. Just something like "medium" or "light", my soundforge has a preset called "smooth compression". I don't think you have worked with the compressor much, so I would suggest a preset for now, until you get further into the settings as you get more comfortable with it. But, set the compressor in the original track, before any other effects, and before going to a bus. The compressor should even out the dynamics a bit, take out some of the highs and lows in volume and smooth them out ("smooth" compression).
If this is the only place you are having dyamics problems, re-adjust your mix (once the compression is in the track), and get the sound back to the best possible mix you can get. Then, export the entire mix as a stereo file, pick "all" or "what you hear", something that will get the entire mix into one stereo file. The master volume setting should be somewhere between -6db and -2db at the absolute loudest for the export. We can get into the fine touches later, I just want it to work for you well enough to hear the precess clearly. Close the project, and open a new one with only one audio track in it, and then you should be able to insert ozone in the fx bin. On the middle screen, just as an experiment, pick one of the presets, maybe one with the exciter and stereo widening, so that you will get a more noticeable change in the sound. At the input slider, adjust the slider to the point where it is just touching the yellow on occasion, and then back it off a little. Then adjust the output slider in the same manner.

At this point you should be noticing a big change. Hit the 'bypass" button on the ozone screen, you will hear the difference quickly.

Once you feel confident with the controls, we can get into the particulars.

Later
Albert

Check your routing. Is everything really routed to the master bus? Ozone should make a change on the master bus. Just an idea.

Ozone features "smart" compression ("Intelligent" and "Intelligent II"). This works really well, especially if you don't quite know what you're doing (which applies to nearly all of us here).

The downside is that these modes will noticeably alter your mix as you adjust the threshold. Consequently, it's common to have to tweak the mix after adding Ozone, as some parts will sink into the mix and others will bob to the surface as a result of the smart compression.

For this reason (and others) I like to do my mastering in place, in the original project. Then I export the file at 24 bits to a wave, and import that wave into my CD master project. In that project I'll have all the songs on one track with minimal processing: a volume envelope (that only lowers volume) to match volumes across the collection, the LP-64 EQ to roll off subsonics, and an instance of Ozone for hard limiting and dither.

Well, I messed around the Ozone and Boost 11 and I don't know what all else.  Posted it on the forum and they're wondering who mastered it for me and how it turned out so well. 

If only I knew!    LOL.  Oh, well.  Thanks again, guys!    Here it is, in case you're interested. 

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=789731&songID=8150663

Thanks for that, Dave.  When I first got Ozone, someone suggested I just go with the presets (knowing how little I knew about mastering, etc.)  But that probably set me back in the long run, since I didn't have to learn what was going on.  And come to think of it, I do remember reading quite a bit about compression, etc., but it wasn't written at a kindergarten level like I needed it.  So...I'll keep fiddling and reading.

And, thank you.  Yes, that's Ivory.  I wish they would have made their 'Grands only' available 2 years ago and I wouldn't have had to try so hard (and fail) to get a good piano sound! 

..."I don't even know why they bother putting them (presets) in"...

Actually, they are there for just these kinds of reasons. I don't feel I'm selling Janet short for saying this, since I had the same problems at first myself.

I had a lot of "musical" training over the years, from a very young age until the late teens I was able to avail myself of some very good teachers who taught theory and practice. But not a one of them had anything more than a mono cassette recorder, the kind with the mic built in. I had no idea what a mixing board was until I started getting into bands, and then, the "band mates" were not allowed to touch the board, that was the sound man's job. Recording was a dream that we could never afford, in a studio for outrageous amounts of money we would never see.

Going to school for recording, even if you put the title "engineer" on it, was unacceptable. Recording was a closed society, if you didn't know someone in the field, you were never going to make any money at it. And you would never dream of spending hard earned money to learn something that did not have a sizable future paychek attached to the diploma.

Fast foward to personal computers with $30 digital recording programs that can produce semi professional results, but still no recording knowledge. Learn as you go. Compression? Carving out a space with eq so that all of the instruments have room? Gain staging? etc.

If it were not for presets, I would never have understood what these magical things actually do. And then the knowledge base from forums such as this and many others, along with the unlimited reading material available on the net, and we have a place to start to learn.

Use a preset, learn what it does, what it is supposed to do, and how to manuipulate the settings.

Maybe for you this all comes easy, and god bless you for that. For myself, self taught is more than a catch phrase, it is reality that never ends. I learn every day, and can now create my own "presets", settings that might be used as a starting point for something that is similar to the last song or two I worked on from the same band that does it almost the same way every time.

At least, that's my story...

Later
Albert

I think I appreciate Bit's concern about not using/abusing presets for mastering (which I rarely use anymore).  Recall that Bit is extremely intelligent with many psycho-acoustic parameters and is not afraid to do-it-all (if you will).

It appears to me, IIRC, that Bit masters his mix twice ... once on the master buss and again in his CD master project (CD architect?)

... but Ozone 4 presets may help your piano and violin as a starting point. 

IMHO, these presets are invaluable
for de-Essing,
for individual instruments in the FX-bin,
for learning by example on every psycho-acoustic parameter that comes your way.
for learning limiting per se
for learning compression per se
for learning EQing per se
for learning Widening per se
for learning reverbs per se

... just focus on one main parameter that you yourself want to polish.

... Try some of the piano presets in the fx-bin on the piano track.  Learn by preset-fun, trial and error, etc. ... this is the scientific method also.  Some presets are excellent ...

I hope Jimmy might chime here.  IIRC, he eschews excessive mastering.  Preset-Mastering can become addictive and terrible for a mix.

Jimmy's ears are excellent for discerning mastering fallacies in a mix.  Eventually, its probably a good idea to wean-off the master-buss effects altogether ... or allow just slight smearing enhancements on the master-buss.

We all gleefully forget how addictive and dangerous mastering is: Mastering evokes loudness-wars, timbre destruction, ear-hammering, and alot of non-musical babylonian confusion.  Pretty soon i'll forget my sweet instruments and become another reprobate commercial out there.  IOWs, I know you and I don't need the master-buss volume maximizer effects to mess with our heads.
For every 0.1 dcbl of threshold I slam down on the maximizer module, I cringe at what destruction is being done to my musical elements.
But Janet, methinks your non-busy instrumental genre (10-20 tracks max) could suffer more track-reverbs, EQ sculpting, compression, etc. ... and non-mastering effects ... as pe Jimmy.
 
IMHO: Ozone4 is no better than Ozone3 for Sonar mixes that are mixed semi-appropriately.  Who needs the mids and sides (Ozone 4) when they smear everything you meticulously enveloped in your mix.  They are also CPU hogs.
 
Ultimately, I like to make (ozone4) master-buss effects only 1% (if that) of my mix-sound.  Many here will concurr that their ears appreciate the mix 99% more than the master ... especially as their ears mature to appreciate the elements that they like.

 
  Phillip has done a superb job of describing the "affect" of
the use of mastering. This is why I can sometimes sound
vague when speaking on the subject. Bitflipper has such
an array of knowledge and tech skills. And he gets to the
point and addresses things so well.
 
  I seem to be more of a "what does it sound like" type
person. All too often people jump on the term "mastering"
And sometimes even to the point that if it's mastered
then its quality.
 
  My definition of mastering starts way before the mix
is considered. Lets take the mix for example. If you have
"mastered" the mix it means you've done a great job
of making it sound great.
 
  If a person is considered to be a master of the guitar
it means they are a great player. It does not mean they
know how to use a "compressor" well. If we now
look at our "song"/mix we have to ask the question
does it sound good?.
 
  This means we are now forgetting what we call
"mastered" altogether. Good mastering makes a good
mix sound great. It can make a bad mix sound decent.
But it cant make a horrible performance sound great no
matter what a person does.
 
  A person who is a master "of anything" doesn't know
it all. what they do know is how to find the answers
to questions. This is much the way I look at this subject.
"questions and answers".
 
  There are so many things we have to learn for ourselves.
This is why just throwing a plugin in the mix doesn't
make it mastered. Learning about the ratio of the
average to max level of a track or a mix is one of the most
important aspects of mixing/mastering.
 
  Knowing the ratio of the difference in db level of the
frequency range is very important as well. Mastering
could very well be called "balance". How evenly balanced
is everything?
 
  A song is a combination of time and events. It's what
happens during all this that defines the end result.
My whole concept of this term mastering is to try
every way posible to avoid doing so.
 
 THEN mastering is icing on the cake. 
 
   Janet. You mentioned I was impressed with your
latest song? It was "away in a manger" not your latest
song. That would be correct if that was your latest song
but it now isn't.